


Onion

by fadeverb



Series: Mortal Lives [4]
Category: In Nomine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:21:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Irina dies. That's not the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Onion

Timeus knelt beside her, holding her hand. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I don't know the Song. I can't heal you."

"What a fine state we're in," Irina whispered back, and tasted blood at the back of her throat. "Go quickly, dear Power. I appreciate the comfort, but I know my destination, and I will die whether you carry me further or not. There are better uses for your time."

This was true, and so he left her there, bleeding. Irina clasped both hands over the wound in her chest, and prayed. "Saints and angels, preserve my soul. God in the Heavens and Christ his son, preserve my soul."

One of the demons approached, pistol in his hand and blood on his shirt. He crouched down beside her, eyes cruel. "They've abandoned you," he said. "How careless the angels are, when they've taken what they needed. If you served my Prince, I could give you your life back, eternal youth, power you've never dreamed of."

Irina reached up to him with one hand, slid the other under her jacket. "What can you offer me?" she asked. "What would you give me?"

The demon leaned closer. "Life," he said. "What fool would give up her life in the cause of those who won't protect her in return? They've wasted your youth and left you old, nearly gone. I can give you back time and health. Don't you want to live?"

She shot through her jacket, the bullet tearing into his face. "Even Christ was tempted," she said, "but I value my soul more than my life, you short-sighted fool."

Irina died smiling.

The terrors of death were not terrible. She felt for a time as if she were laid across her mother's lap, a small child at the midnight mass on Christmas Eve, fallen asleep in the midst of the music. Carried home in her mother's arms, but the music around her never faded, only grew louder, as if all the church were following them down the snowy streets towards home.

She opened her eyes to look back at the cathedral all lit up with bright lamps against the stained glass, and saw the gates of Heaven.

"Beautiful," murmured one who walked beside her, and she turned to see a man, dark-skinned and shorter than she was, with a face full of glory. He smiled at her. "I don't know the name of the place," he said, "but it's beautiful."

"The just reward of those who serve God," said a portly woman to her left, who walked with a limp that grew fainter at every step. "I knew, I always knew..."

Irina tucked her hands inside her jacket. "Home," she said.

The gates stood open before them, and beyond she could see the faces of other men and women, even children, anxious and hopeful to see who came. Bright angels with white wings, and Irina smiled to see the Mercurians, a better choice for greeters than the terrifying and beautiful Most Holy. Stepping through the gates felt like late spring, when all the flowers blossomed and there was no fear of snow.

Angels and other blessed souls approached, paper and pens at hand, to take down the names of the righteous. Irina stepped aside to let others press forward. She would give her name in time, but first, to see the distant spires of the city of Heaven, to breath in the air cleaner and sweeter than any she'd tasted before...

"Irina?"

She started at the name, and turned. A child--no, not a child, but an angel no larger than a small girl, with sleek black wings like some dark butterfly spread behind her. "Are you Irina?" the little angel asked, looking at a photograph in her hand. "A Soldier of God, serving the Archangel Laurence, under the supervision of the Elohite Timeus..."

"You were expecting me?"

"Of course." The little angel smiled, and offered a hand. "I am Ophel, reliever of the Sword, and I was sent to wait for you here. Let me take you to the Eternal City."

They walked along smooth stone paths, grassy stretches where no amount of traffic beat the plants into dirt, to marble streets where every building stood perfect around them. "How does gravity work?" she asked, as her feet touched ground with every step, and Ophel drifted beside her like a leaf sailing down a rushing stream. "Does Heaven have a mass? Do souls and angels in their true forms?"

"I'm...not sure," said the reliever, blinking up at her. "It just works. Or doesn't, if you'd prefer." Ophel pointed up to the sky above them, where angels flew, and souls as well, people like her drifting or speeding as they liked. "Most blessed souls prefer to walk when they arrive, until they go the Higher Heavens or become more used to this place."

"What about acceleration? How does it work, with these...variable masses? Or is the mass constant, and only that gravity works differently?" Irina gave a little jump, and entertained the notion that she might not land again. She found herself walking on air, strange against her feet, but willed herself to never fall.

"I'm...not sure." Ophel fluttered her wings uncertainly. "It's not something I've studied. It just works. Maybe Lightning would know? We can go there next, if you wanted to ask. Maybe they know in the Higher Heavens."

"No matter," she said. "I was only curious. There are more important things to know than the physics of Heaven."

The reliever led her on, to a place where the walls were covered in names, and candles lit all about to shine on them. She found her own name there, written out in full, with her father's name tucked inside it like a ring in a jewelry box, safely kept. On the end, her husband's name. She didn't know what that was like, but there it was, still a part of her name. "It's to honor your sacrifice," Ophel said, maybe misreading her expression. "We honor all those humans who choose to give their lives for the work of Heaven."

"The work of God," she corrected Ophel, but gently, because she was only a child, even if an angel. "May Heaven always do the work of God."

The reliever waited silent for a moment, as Irina ran her fingers over her name, and saw how many names had been carved in the wall. "I think I see the difference," Ophel said. "Where may I take you now? Would you like to go to the ladder, and up to the Higher Heavens? It's the destination of all blessed souls. Or was there someone you wanted to look for here, before moving on? Records to see if those who you loved arrived and already moved on."

"I would like to see Timeus, if I might," she said. She had no desire to speak of those she'd loved, who she knew would not be found here. "Can you bring him to me?"

"I'll see what I can do," said the reliever, and led her on.

They arrived at a little shop set beside one of the roads, with beautiful iron tables and fragile pottery cups to hold the drinks. Irina sat there and spoke with other souls, waiting for Ophel to return with news. One man came from France, an atheist who found this all strange but wonderful; another was a young woman from a small island she'd never heard of, a worshipper of pagan gods, who'd lived in the Eternal City for months now, waiting for her mother to arrive. She had long black hair, and wore little, but there seemed no impiety to her bared chest, even beside Irina's full skirts. They shared a bottle of vodka, finer than any Irina had tasted before, and spoke of the strange ways of angels.

Ophel finally came again, settling down on an empty chair at the table. "I'm sorry," she said, "but Timeus waited for a time, and then returned to Earth, as it has duties to attend to there that could not be neglected. It left a note for you, but requested that you not read it until someone had spoken to you of the Higher Heavens, and of Saints."

The reliever spoke to her of the Higher Heavens, the final reward of all blessed souls, a truer and higher place than even the angels here could ever reach. When she was sure Irina understood this, she went on speak of Saints, not the famous men and women she knew from all their icons and stories, but humans who returned to the material world in secret after their deaths, agents of God. "You've already given your life for us once," said Ophel, at the end. "If you now wish to ascend to the Higher Heavens, we will bless you on your way."

"Give me the note," Irina said, and she was given a sheet of smooth parchment, across which was written in Timeus's neat hand, as neat as his uniforms ever were:

_Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God;_

_"She once pulled up an onion in her garden," said he, "and gave it to a beggar woman."_

_And God answered: "You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is."_

_The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. "Come," said he, "catch hold and I'll pull you out." He began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her._

_But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. "I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours." As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away._

"There's always hope," she murmured, and saw that the reliever did not understand. Irina smiled at the child. "There are those I've left behind who I still love, dear Ophel. I would have them reunited with God, but there's so much work to be done, to bring all to the grace and mercy of Christ." She folded the paper, and put it away inside her jacket. "If your Archangel will let me, Ophel, I would be an onion."

**Author's Note:**

> The onion story is, of course, from _The Brothers Karamazov_. And I have rather loved it ever since I first read it. (The story, that is. I ought to read the full book one of these days. Recommend a translation!)


End file.
